Hemlock 03: Willowgrove (25 page)

His phone. Miraculously, it hadn’t fallen into the fountain or gotten wet.

I glanced up. Our two guards still had their guns trained on us, but my body was shielding Jason’s hands from view.

I turned my attention back to him just in time to see his fingers dart clumsily across the phone’s surface. His hands were shaking so badly that I wasn’t sure how he managed to hold the phone without dropping it.

The screen went black.

Jason struggled to slip the phone back into his pocket. I reached between us, helping.

“Thanks,” he muttered, voice rough and a little weak. He tensed as he stared at something over my shoulder.

I eased away from him and twisted as Kyle crossed the parking lot, the envelope from the mailbox in his hands.

I started to push myself to my feet, but at a wave from
one of the guns, I settled for kneeling. The edges of flagstones bit into my knees and the cold from the ground seeped into my bones. Next to me, Jason raised himself to a sitting position, using the fountain for support. His lips were still slightly blue and he was shivering.

Donovan intercepted Kyle before he could get near Sinclair. Given the look on Kyle’s face, I couldn’t blame him. There were times when it was easy to forget the horrible things Kyle had been forced to do since becoming infected. This was not one of those times.

Donovan took the envelope and peered inside before removing the two DVD cases. He glanced at Stephen. “Are these them?”

Stephen nodded and swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s them.” He looked oddly beaten down and defeated considering he had been planning on turning the hard drive over to Sinclair all along. He glanced at me and his cheeks flushed. He was only able to hold my gaze for a second before looking away.

Maybe watching Sinclair threaten and hurt people he had known for years—people who had trusted him—was just more than he had bargained for.

Donovan glanced at Jason and me as he handed the DVDs to Sinclair. “We should keep at least one of them alive until we check the church.”

“Two, I think.” Something shrewd and dark shifted behind Sinclair’s gaze as it darted between Kyle and Jason. “Otherwise, they don’t have anything to lose.”

I was
so
going to kill her.

“You said you’d let them go.” There was a growl to Stephen’s voice. He took a step toward the warden and one of Donovan’s men intercepted him. “They told you what you wanted.”

“I lied.” Sinclair glanced at Donovan. “Kill the wolf.”

“No!” The word burst from my lungs just as the world across the river exploded.

T
IME SLOWED AS A FIREBALL ROSE INTO THE NIGHT SKY
—so high that it was visible over the roof of the strip mall. Even on this side of the water, the force of the explosion was incredible. It rattled windows and set off car alarms and distracted Donovan and his men.

The whole thing lasted only an instant, but an instant was all Kyle needed.

He threw himself forward—not at Donovan or his men, but at Sinclair. He grabbed one of her arms and twisted it behind her back. He placed his other hand—a hand that was long and clawed and no longer human—at her throat.

Sinclair was already infected—Kyle couldn’t hurt her that way—but he could still rip out her throat.

It was a scene that was eerily familiar; it was a scene that threw me right back to the night of the breakout.

Kyle’s eyes locked on Donovan. “Tell your men to let them up.”

Donovan raised an eyebrow. He looked unnervingly calm, but when he spoke, his accent was thicker than it had
been. “And then what? Do you really think you can just walk out of here?”

“Let them up,” repeated Kyle. The muscles in his arm twitched and Sinclair flinched as one of his claws pierced the delicate skin just below her carotid artery.

Donovan hesitated, but then nodded at the two men covering Jason and me. They lowered their guns and stepped back.

It was an improvement, but we were still outnumbered and outgunned. Donovan was right: there was no way we were walking out of here.

I pushed myself up on unsteady legs and reached down to help Jason to his feet. His leg buckled under his weight and I only just kept him from eating the flagstones.

“Knee,” he hissed in between swear words as he hopped back on his good leg and lowered himself to the ledge of the fountain.

I bit my lower lip. If we could get Jason to the car . . . I looked up. Three of Donovan’s men had fanned out behind Kyle, blocking any escape out of the courtyard.

“Stephen . . .” The warden struggled to address Amy’s brother as Kyle’s hand tightened around her throat. “You understand the importance of what we’re doing. You can’t let your sister’s
friends
”—she stumbled over the word like it was a foreign concept—“jeopardize that.”

“I—” Stephen shook his head. The family resemblance between him and Amy was almost nil—it was like comparing day and night—but in that instant, I swear I saw her in his eyes. He shook his head a second time and took a step
back, distancing himself from Sinclair and the situation.

I glanced at the warden. The look in her eyes said Stephen had better run if she ever got free.

Jason grabbed my arm and pulled me down toward him. “Get Kyle and get out of here.”

“We’re not going to leave you.” Had he hit his head when they hauled him out of the fountain?

He tightened his grip on my arm. “Listen—in another minute . . .”

His voice trailed off as, somewhere nearby, tires squealed on pavement. He swore. “There’s no time. I sent a 3-1-1. It was the only thing I could think of.”

I stared at him blankly. What the hell was a 3-1-1?

Jason let go of my arm and pushed a hand through his still-dripping hair. “All those Trackers covering the street outside Amy’s? I told them there were werewolves attacking regs at the strip mall. I told them to come
here
.”

Horror and comprehension flooded me as I twisted to glance back at Kyle. Were those headlights on the street?

“You have to get out of here,” continued Jason. “Now.”

I shook my head as I turned back to him. He was right—we had to get out of here—but we couldn’t just leave him behind.

I couldn’t leave him behind.

“I’ll be all right,” he said, reading my thoughts. He pushed me away. “The Trackers will take care of me.”

“They’re the bad guys.”

“Not all of them,” said Jason, “and right now we need them.” He tried to get to his feet and fell back, cursing. “
I
need them—hell, I can’t even walk. Get Kyle and get out of here. If they find him, they’ll kill him.”

A car roared into the parking lot. A second followed.

“Go!” growled Jason as Donovan shouted instructions to his men. More headlights were visible in the distance. There had been dozens of Trackers at Amy’s—God only knew how many were on their way here now.

With a last, anguished look at Jason, I forced myself to move.

“Kyle!”

He shoved Sinclair as I ran toward him, sending her stumbling forward, into Donovan.

I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him out of the courtyard—it was like trying to move a brick wall. “Please, Kyle. We have to go, they’re Trackers.”

Still, he resisted. “What about Jason?”

“He’ll be all right.” I prayed the words were true as they left my mouth. Jason was right: he needed the Trackers. He needed medical attention and protection—things Kyle and I were powerless to get him.

For a horrible second, I thought Kyle would argue, but then he let out a frustrated, strangled noise and grabbed my hand. Together, we ran as the first few Trackers poured out of their cars and yelled for us to stop.

I didn’t look back. Not to check on Jason. Not even as someone opened fire.

I heard a howl—Stephen?—somewhere behind us, but I just kept running.

Lungs burning, I sank to the damp grass on the riverbank and fought to catch my breath. It felt like we had been running for hours. In reality, it had probably been less than ten minutes.

I could see the exit for the bridge up ahead. Once we had put some distance between ourselves and the strip mall, I had told Kyle that Trey and Serena were back at my apartment. It was something I had forgotten to tell him and Jason in my excitement to find Amy’s mailbox.

Heading to the apartment wasn’t up for debate. There was nowhere else for us to go. Nothing else we could do.

My breathing evened out, but my chest still ached. We had left Jason behind. For the second time in as many days,
I
had left him behind.

Kyle stood over me, keeping watch as he swiftly fastened the few remaining buttons on his shirt. Given the amount of blood staining the white cotton, he might have been better off just tossing it into the river. I caught a quick glimpse of his shoulder. Blood had dried on his skin, but there was no sign of the bullet wounds.

“Mac?” When I didn’t answer, he crouched down.

Gently, I reached out and slipped my hand under his shirt, placing my fingertips on the spot where the bullets had hit. The skin was as smooth and undamaged as it had looked.

“You didn’t have to shift to heal?” I asked, voice far away and shell-shocked after everything that had just happened.

“Not for this,” he said, taking my hand and gently moving it away. “If they had hit a bit lower or a few inches in . . .”

“Oh.” I didn’t say anything else for a long moment. “We just left him,” I said finally, dropping my gaze to the grass as I slipped my hand out of Kyle’s.

Gently, he reached out and tilted my chin up. “Jason will be okay,” he said. “The Trackers can get him to the hospital. They can make sure nothing’s wrong.”

I nodded. I knew that, but leaving Jason with a group of Trackers still didn’t feel right. Sure, they thought he was one of them—for now. But the group was almost as much of a danger to regs with werewolf sympathies as it was to werewolves themselves. I didn’t want to imagine what they would do to Jason if they found out his best friend was infected or that he had been involved in the Thornhill breakout.

Thornhill.

My eyes widened. “The DVDs.” I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself tightly and fighting back the urge to throw up. If Sinclair had managed to evade the Trackers, she had the DVDs. Hell, even if she hadn’t escaped, there was no way we could go back for the discs. They probably wouldn’t be there, anyway.

Kyle’s brows pulled together in a frown.

“You gave Sinclair the DVDs.” There was no recrimination in my voice—I would have done the same thing if our roles had been reversed—but a deep sense of loss spread through my body. I glanced down at the river. The water was dark and swift, and the fires on the other side of town were reflected on its rippled surface. The current washed everything away. Every shred of hope.

“Mac . . .” Kyle cupped my cheek with his palm and
turned my face away from the water. With his other hand, he reached behind him and pulled something from the small of his back. A DVD case with the words
Arcade Fire
scrawled in thick, black letters on the front.

Hands shaking, I lifted the case from his hands and opened it. Two DVDs were nestled inside.

It took me a second to find my voice. “I don’t understand.”

He shrugged and a faint smile crossed his face. “You lied to Sinclair about Serena. I lied to her about the DVDs.”

“The concert bootlegs you bought after the Arcade Fire show . . .” I said, wonder filling my voice. A guy had been hawking them out of his trunk in the parking lot. I had thought it was a waste of money—why buy a DVD when half those clips were probably on YouTube?—but Kyle had shelled out twenty bucks.

“Good thing I never clean out my car,” he said drily.

In response, I threw my arms around him.

The city was burning and God only knew what was happening back at the strip mall, but maybe—just maybe—things weren’t entirely hopeless.

The walk to my apartment took almost two hours.

We made it to the bridge just before the National Guard blocked it off, but progress across was painfully slow. The northbound lanes were gridlocked, and the pedestrian walkway was clogged with people trying to get away from the destruction and chaos on the south side of town.

There was something comforting about being surrounded
by so many people. Even if Sinclair and Donovan had dodged the Trackers, there was no way they would be able to catch up to us. Not in this.

Our appearance earned us more than a few curious looks, but no one asked any questions. Even though the bottom half of my dress was in tatters and Kyle’s shirt was covered in blood, there were people in the crowd who were in much worse shape. I spotted three broken noses, five broken arms, and at least twelve black eyes before I stopped counting.

A lot of the people we passed looked numb. Shell-shocked. Just the way I felt. How could Stephen have been helping Sinclair? I understood wanting a cure and the fear of being discovered—especially when your own grandfather was lobbying for tougher regulations against the infected—but how could he have sold us out? How could he have lied to us so easily and how could I have believed him?

Easy
, said a small voice in the back of my head, a voice that sounded an awful lot like Amy’s.
You believed him because you wanted to.

Someone collided with my shoulder, hard, and Kyle reached out to steady me as I tightened my grip on the DVDs. I glanced back, but whoever had hit me was already gone, swallowed by the crowd. As far as I could tell, we were the only ones heading
toward
the downtown core, and pushing against the press of people was like trying to swim upstream. I reached for Kyle’s phone to call Trey, to tell him where we were, and came up empty.

“Shit.” I twisted around, but the ground behind us had
already been swallowed by the throng. “The phone—I think it fell out of my pocket when that guy hit me.”

Kyle’s mouth pressed into a hard line as he glanced over his shoulder, but he didn’t suggest we go back for it. There was no way the phone could have escaped being crushed.

A chorus of shouts rose around us as a man with a megaphone announced that the north side of town was closed off and that everyone would have to head back the way they had come.